Mahmood Khan on the Ropes!

Guest post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman

A concerned resident sent me an email summary of Mahmood Khan's troubles today. Pictured above is the infamous 2222 4th St N, as well as "The Neapolitan House." It appears Khan may be heading in the same direction as Gregge Johnson, who did indeed have his rental licenses revoked at the last city council meeting. If Khan needs a little push, well, that's what this blog is for.

Without further ado, here is the email (with Hawkman commentary)...

The property and demo of 2222 4th ST N went before the PSRS committee of the city council today. The bottom line is that they recommended that the building be demolished, but the city will try to work with Kahn to see if another rehab agreement can be entered into. It will be voted on at the next city council meeting. It gets pretty complicated, but the repairs look costly for Mr. Kahn.

Just a few of things that he did/will have to do:

- he never got a site plan review before working on the building
- he never replaced the roof like he was supposed to do
- he will have to enclose the back outside stairwell
- he will have to redo almost all of the work that he has previously done
- he will have to replace all the used carpet, windows, siding
- he didn't even use carpet padding or tack strips to secure the carpet down
- he has to redo the gas pipping, he never got a permit to do any work
- he has to redo the duct work, he never got a permit to do any work
- the list goes on and on...

Mr. Kahn says he is rough financial shape. He doesn't have a lot of money to fix up these properties. He has not paid any of property taxes on any of his properties for the second half of the year. He has to go get some financing from a bank. I didn't know that was standard procedure.

If he is given another rehab agreement all the work must be done with 90 days and he must also pay a $50k security deposit. He also threatened to sue the city if they demo the property. CM Samuels, Johnson and Hofstede were vocal in their disdain of Kahn. At one point Kahn said that he and the city were working on the same team. CM Johnson replied, "We are not on the same team." I laughed out loud about this.

(End email, begin Hawkman commentary)

First, rest assured that I will track down links and/or pdfs to as much of this information as possible.

Second, I see no reason why we should show any mercy to a slumlord who comes to the city crying about how rough a financial shape he's in AFTER he has bought multiple properties that he had no business affording, AFTER he has either neglected these properties or done extraordinarily sub-par work, and AFTER he has REPEATEDLY failed to uphold his end of the bargain. I believe the financing aspect the email writer refers to is a requirement that Khan either show liquid assets, provide a bond of some kind, or have a letter of credit as collateral. He had that before, but now lost it and has to scrape money together from somewhere.

When begging and crying hardship don't seem to work, Khan then threatens to sue?! I know the city has to be careful about this, but my knee-jerk reaction when such a threat is made is to double my efforts - which is what Khan should have done.